FRIDAY short TAKES.

The craziness around the world doesn't take a holiday just because I do.

1.  Vogue hates conservative women?

2.  Sexual freedom enslaves.  "What word of sanity can bring us back from the breach of normalizing pedophilia, for example, when the slope everyone swore wasn’t slippery has indeed led to the prophesied transgender craze and the celebration of every manner of sexual perversion?"

3.  Two rotten politicians demonstrate the sickness of America’s political culture.

4.  If Republicans lose big time in 2022, they have nobody but themselves to blame.

5.  No wonder the vaccine is still politicized.

6.  Preach it!  "The modern characterization for many politicians who refuse to take a stand, especially in the midst of the growing and rapid threat of American socialism, is the word 'weenie.'"

7.  The legacy of the self-styled progressives.  "Should we be surprised that an ideology that believes American civilization is fundamentally evil has resulted in the breakdown of that civilization?"

8.  No increase in the debt ceiling!  "They run up the credit card and blame the credit card company for not giving them a higher credit limit."

9.  Never apologize, never explain, always mock.

10.  Environmentalist wackos.  "Greenpeace's decades-long campaign against modern crop biotechnology is a disgraceful disservice to their fellow human beings."

11.  The end of federalism?  "As a result, we're continuing to move even further down the road toward the states effectively becoming administrative units of the federal government."

12.  Thanks, ficus.  "If Biden hadn’t been so dead set on killing the energy industry here in the United States, he might not have had to go begging to OPEC for more oil!"

13.  Well, good. Increasing vaccination rates among Americans may result in a decoupling between infections and deaths.

14.  The populist blogosphere at work.  "Cuomo has to go now, not because the establishment found out about him, but because we did."  But his tyranny gets a pass?  "Better to brush Cuomo under the rug than for Cuomo's opponents to continue holding him up as an object lesson in dictatorial and bloviating incompetence."

15.  Easier to create majority-minority districts? "Because of residential segregation, it's easier to break apart or pack together communities of color to move the dial."  Depends on who perceives the inequity.

16.  That is, if "majority-minority" even makes any sense. “What’s the fastest growing group? Mixed race. That group doubled. Anyone who goes into the group takes away from one of the other groups.”  It was early in the history of Cold Spring Shops that I noted kids dating across what used to be uncrossable lines.  Maybe in a hundred years their grandchildren will wonder what the fuss was about.

DOES THE ARGUMENT GENERALIZE?

Why should public health bureaucrats be different from any other bureaucrats?  "Unvaccinated Americans have been called 'arrogant,' 'selfish' 'stupid,' 'idiots' and worse for refusing to get the jab." Is it churlish of me to note that people who objected back in the day to intact busing of classes, or to critical studies in third grade today, get called "racist," or that sport shooters who object to totally ineffective "common sense gun control" get called "NRA dupes."

Yeah, that's whataboutism.  Deal with it.  Then, dear self-styled Intellectual Betters, take an education from some of the people whose job it is to persuade people who have not yet gotten their Trump shots to schedule an appointment.

"If you’re going to call me an idiot … that isn’t encouragement,” Stephanie McClure, an assistant professor of biocultural medical anthropology at the University of Alabama, told USA TODAY.  “You usually don’t get anywhere by attacking people.”

Shaming and insulting people is "not a very effective way to promote adoption of a behavior,” said McClure, who leads the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, team for CommuniVax, a national alliance advocating for historically underserved Black, Indigenous and Latino populations amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

That "basket of deplorables" or that "47% dependent on government" didn't work so well for a few recent presidential hopefuls, did it? The same thing is true for convincing people that the shots are safe.

[Behavioral scientist Gleb] Tsipursky said all major demographics of unvaccinated people don't respond well to authorities telling them what to do.

Blame and insults are particularly counterproductive when dealing with people who may see the vaccine as a political issue, he said. That tone creates a defensive response in which they are likely “lash out against authority” – even if it puts them at a greater risk.

Tsipursky said he prefers positive language: Vaccinated people are doing their civic duty; they're patriots; they're protecting their families.

A little humility on the part of the Credentialed Experts would also help.

IS IT TIME TO CREATE A BREWER DISTRICT?

In Milwaukee, the political authorities are forever attempting to get their expressways right.  The original expressway, from near the fairgrounds to downtown passing the baseball stadium, was jammed into a space between some cemeteries, as well as running along the side of a bluff.  It really doesn't make sense to widen it, as that won't do anything for the congestion.  That original system also included the beginning of a crosstown expressway that forced the destruction of the Washington Park Zoo (in favor of a modern zoo in suburbia that has won a few awards, as well as providing the name of an expressway interchange that figures in all the traffic delay reports) and would have carved up the Sherman Boulevard neighborhood to the north and the Jackson Park neighborhood to the south.  Those segments were never built.  But what to do with the short segment that was built?

Get rid of it.  "This highway spur is not serving the city well in its current form, and should be converted to a boulevard. If we are going to be spending a billion dollars to reshape the infrastructure of the west side of Milwaukee, let’s do something that would have the potential to bring truly meaningful change to this city."

The author suggests naming the boulevard for Henry Aaron.  The article (it's long, and wonky in places) invokes the Deer District you might have seen on television during the basketball championships.  That area used to be the route of the Park East expressway, a northwest to downtown expressway that was supposed to continue along the lake shore to the south.  As the extension from the Capitol Court area to downtown was projected through a historically black neighborhood, that idea went away sometime in the 1970s.  But we lost the lakefront Chicago and North Western depot.

A short stretch of an otherwise not terribly useful expressway, hard by the stadium, might be yet another good location for outdoor watch parties.

WHY CAN'T WE GET BETTER TRANSPORTATION WRITERS?

Florida's Brightline will be resuming scheduled train operation.  That's good news, but check out the misleading sub-headline in the story.  "The passenger rail service, linked to an unusual number of deaths, suspended operations in March 2020." No, the trains were not a coronavirus vector.  The linkage, also, is suspect, but you have to read way down for the clarification.

Brightline is completing several projects to address safety issues that arose soon after its bright yellow trains began zipping through densely populated South Florida at speeds up to 79 miles an hour.

A 2019 Associated Press investigation documented that its trains killed more pedestrians and car drivers per mile than any railroad in the country. The 45 deaths prior to Brightline suspending service translates to one death for every 31,000 miles.

Most of the deaths have been by suicide. The rest were drivers and pedestrians trying to beat the train by going around guardrails or running across the tracks.

None of the fatalities was deemed to have been the fault of Brightline engineers or trains, but the crashes have had a psychological impact on crew members. Several have been involved in multiple fatalities.

If only journalists on the railway beat would read Cold Spring Shops.  We've also called attention to the anguish dub drivers and suicidal pedestrians cause the engineers.

All the misinformation in that article does is make people less willing to ride trains, or to provide public money for railway infrastructure that is often more productive than the usual roads, bridges, airports, and waterways.

NEUROTIC CAT LADIES WHO DON'T WANT ANYONE HAVING FUN.

I've heard that description of Our Progressive Betters a few times recently, both on populist television and among the weblogs that cater to the Militant Normals.  The more I follow the second year of corona tyranny, the more I think that there's something to it.  Consider, dear reader, the Sturgis motorcycle rally, which, last year, was supposed to be The End of The World.  "I suspect, as well, that as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and addiction are not infectious diseases in the sense of Fauci, the good doctor is less than competent to trade off those costs against the benefits of mask up, shut up, have no fun, and no holiday gatherings."  It wasn't.  But that wasn't newsworthy.

No matter, though.  The bikers are gathering again, and the fretful people are fretting again.

While Fauci is once again “very concerned” that we will see another surge related to the rally, he provides zero evidence there was one last year, and the data does not support his contention. Once again, he is saying we have to get the pandemic under control before people can return to normal activities.

It’s just more messaging that reduces confidence in vaccines from the man who is the face of the pandemic response. If the vaccines effectively prevent severe illness and death, attendees have had adequate time to receive one. Those who have chosen not to are making their own risk assessment. Fauci’s continued insistence that the government has a role in managing people’s behavior with vaccines available to everyone is getting absurd. Zero COVID-19 is no longer a rational goal, and it is long past time for Fauci to admit it.

When the public health boffins talk about "a pandemic of the unvaccinated," that's not really a pandemic, is it? I also have a suspicion that "zero corona" is about "attaining zero corona." That I will develop another day.  Today, it's about the use of the corona tyranny to shame people Our Intellectual Betters despise.

It has been obvious from the beginning that the rules that CDC and Democratic governors inflict on the rest of us do not apply to liberal elites. Chuck Todd is not a journalist, and 'Doctor' Fauci is not a scientist. No wonder so many people don’t bother to listen to either one.

Somewhere, there has to be a culture-studies type wondering what the intellectual standards are for celebrating some kinds of transgressivity but not others.  "Vendors at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota are selling merchandise bearing Nazi imagery."  It's not enough that those riders are burning a lot of gasoline and making a lot of noise despite The Climate Crisis, and that they're hanging out and drinking a lot of beer and spreading the Wuhan coronavirus.  They're also buying their grandparents' war trophies.

[South Dakota ABC (of course) affiliate] KOTA interviewed one vendor, Jenny Alonso, who defended selling merchandise with offensive imagery.

"A lot of bikers, you know, it's a freedom thing," Alonso told KOTA. "A lot of bikers want to be free and voice their opinion and I like to cater to what they want. It doesn't mean that I necessarily believe in everything but, you know, I like to please everybody."

Alonso described Nazi merchandise as a way to honor US soldiers who brought Nazi memorabilia back as trophies after World War II.

"So, we're kind of honoring that not necessarily that, you know, we believe in Nazis and Hitler, but it's just kind of a special thing that the US military was able to go and win the war and bring things back as souvenirs and they would put them on their bike," Alonso said.

But if you're a neurotic cat lady, that's having too much fun, in an environment too drenched with testosterone and estrogen interacting the way Nature, or Nature's God, intended, and you have to shame it.

THE ETERNAL FASCINATION OF BASEBALL.

Milwaukee Brewer pitcher Aaron Ashby made his debut against the Chicago Cubs a few weeks ago, pitching 2/3 of an inning, going back to the minors with an earned run average of 54.00 and no decision.  More recently, the Brewers have had a run of positive tests for Wuhan coronavirus, affecting the bullpen in particular, and Mr Ashby was back up.  To pitch to the Cubs at Wrigley Field in a game that started, then went into a long rain delay.  "Ashby doubled up on his last outing going 2 innings allowing two hits and a strikeout. Ashby presumably would’ve gone deeper into the game, but a rain delay lasting one hour and twenty-six minutes were too much downtime for Counsell to send out Hunter Strickland."  A denominator of 2 2/3 with no runs allowed can do wonders to the earned run average.  It's just math.

It's after the rain delay that the fascinating stuff began.  Mr Strickland pitched a scoreless inning.  He was succeeded by recent trade acquisition John Curtiss, who has not had an auspicious beginning in Milwaukee.  Patrick Wisdom touched him for a home run, then he pulled up lame with two out, two on, and a full count to Johneshwy Fargas.  It turned out to be a fairly serious injury, and Mr Curtiss's season might be over.  In comes Miguel Sanchez: Mr Fargas looks at strike three, then the Brewers bat around, with Mr Sanchez lifted for a pinch hitter and getting the win as six runs come in.  (Five burgers, five bucks, for those who live close to a George Webb, and hoist the Sprecher at Cold Spring Shops.)

And how quickly the fortunes change for the Cubs.  When was it, early June, that four pitchers combined to no-hit the Dodgers, which was the last time the Cubs beat the Dodgers.  And the Brewers have been giving the Cubs fits all season.  "Milwaukee Is Responsible for the Cubs’ Rebuild."  Here's how Chicago sports scribe Paul Sullivan sees it.  "The Brewers have managed to win without significant offensive contributions from Christian Yelich, the 2018 NL MVP, and despite having seven players on the COVID-19 injured list, including closer Josh Hader and infielder Keston Hiura."  It's still a long way to September, though.

MILITANT NORMALS CAN PUSH BACK.

Chris Stigall sees what Our Progressive Betters are doing.

We’re living in a time of great provocation directed at the American people from those in elected office.  Virtually all levels of government are barely hiding the disdain and contempt they have for the people they’re supposed to serve.

The pandemic has given county commissioners, school boards, health directors, mayors, governors and federal officials an emperor complex, lording over our daily lives deciding which privilege they will or won’t allow based on their whims.

They justify it by calling it science.  It’s not.  It’s provocation and it's working for the left on many fronts in very effective ways.

It's more like a restoration of the primitive, with the denunciation of heretics being the way to control people. Yes, I still owe you an elaboration of that claim. But that's for another day.

Government agents big and small and their fascist corporate partners flexing their muscles, poking you in the chest, smiling as they call you an insurrectionist and just daring you to cross them.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was written at a time when fathers were kings of their homes and wielded total, unquestionable authority. It’s Paul’s biblical warning to fathers not to behave as tyrants lest they produce restless or rebellious children who ultimately resent them.

That same warning should be heeded by public officials who forget we’re a republic and “consent of the governed” is still the order of things.  Ignoring that fact will produce a “restless and rebellious” electorate, too.

And that’s just what the provocateurs in charge are hoping.

I'm not sure about that last sentence: the provocateurs in charge might be hoping that the traditional incantations and totems will still work.  Rick Moran suggests the provocateurs are in trouble.  "One Republican super PAC — the Congressional Leadership Fund — is testing three specific war-winning strategies in swing districts this week that will highlight the incompetence, the stupidity, and the radicalism of the Democratic Party. They are running ads targeting three vulnerable Democratic House members on three issues of great importance to all Americans: inflation, violent crime, and the teaching of critical race theory in schools."  I've called attention thereto before, with "It's a side benefit that the artsy establishment is of a piece with that part of the policy establishment with a history of being soft on crime, soft on communism (when that was a thing) and soft on counterterrorism."  The technocratic overreach that has been the corona tyranny can also be a winning pragmatic populist message, if delivered properly.

PAY OFF THE MOOCHER BASE!

Umme Hoque words it more politely.  "Biden has a perfect opportunity to deliver progressive change to the millennials who voted for him."  The change she's seeking?

Biden and his Democratic colleagues should start by canceling the debt and investing in higher education. While Congress remains stuck as communities suffer, canceling student debt is a simple action the President can and must take to show he is serious about making a material difference in people’s lives.

Canceling student debt would put billions of dollars back into local communities and businesses, creating jobs and opportunity. It could not only help rebuild our still fragile economy, but also serve as a way for Biden to thank the people who risked their health to vote for him.

That's rich, coming after a recitation of the hard-hit "local communities" where debt forgiveness would be beneficial.  It's the usual suspects.  Milwaukee.  Philadelphia.  Newark.  Boston.  San Francisco.  There are reasons other than debt incurred in the quest of useless degrees why those neighborhoods are suffering.

I will credit her argument for highlighting the continuing spat between the communist and corporatist wings of the Democrats.

In reality, student debt drags down entire communities across all income brackets, and cancellation would spur the economic recovery that our cities and towns desperately need while also helping to narrow the racial wealth gap.

Although Pelosi is exhibiting her trademark level of confusion and condescension, a growing number of local officials recognize that cancelling debt is an economic stimulus issue, a racial justice issue, an intergenerational issue—an issue for all of us.

Making the net worth of unemployable college graduates less negative isn't a real inspiring cause, is it?

I read Common Dreams, dear reader, so you don't have to.

WE'D BELIEVE YOU IF YOU DIDN'T CONDESCEND SO MUCH.

Kevin D. Williamson's "Fauci — and many others — went wrong by talking to us like we are stupid rather than ignorant" might have qualified as a Friday short Take. A follow-on piece of advice, however, merits repetition in full.

Every statement to the public regarding epidemic management and policy should begin and end with a disclaimer, something like this: “This is the best we can tell you based on what we know right now and conditions as we understand them. Don’t be surprised if our recommendations or our policies change. In fact, be surprised if they don’t change. This is a new virus and we are, in that respect, starting from scratch. We don’t have it all figured out yet, and we aren’t going to have it all figured out in the foreseeable future, but we think the best chance for our getting through this with the minimum degree of suffering, death, and disruption is for everybody to cooperate, to row in the same direction. And we say that even knowingthat we are going to be wrong in certain cases.”

Yes, and had the public health types recognized, two or three weeks into the scare, that it wasn't as scary as the initial fears suggested, they might have been fine.  Unfortunately, the public health types didn't show a little humility, and Our Progressive Betters engaged in their usual propensity to hector, condescend, and deplorable-shame, and now we have, for good or ill, more widespread questioning of Official Authority.  Which might not be a bad thing. 

On purely pragmatic grounds, the noble lie runs into predictable difficulties: One is that people such as Fauci, though highly expert in one field, are not actually very good at predicting how the public will respond to any given statement or directive. Another is that when the misleading statement is revealed as such — as it will be — trust in experts and institutions declines, and it often declines disproportionately as people irritated by clumsy attempts at manipulation write off entire agencies and enterprises as untrustworthy.

One of the problems is that agencies such as the CDC believe — wrongly, I think — that the more they present themselves as Olympians, the more people will listen to them and follow their advice. They believe — wrongly, I think — that if they admit the complexity of a situation, then people will ignore them. But civic-minded and responsible people — and those are the only ones we should really bother even trying to talk to, there’s no point in wasting time on the other kind — can handle being told that things are complex and subject to regular revision. They often sense when they are being condescended to and when they are not getting the whole story.

In addition, there's a pattern to who is engaging in the Noble Lies and the condescension, and it's not a pattern among Militant Normals. "We have seen environmentalists, to name one prominent example, justify misleading the public (mostly through exaggeration and alarmism) as a necessary measure to get people to support what they believe to be necessary climate policies — and, predictably, the result has been a persistent belief in some quarters that climate change is a hoax cooked up by power-hungry crypto-Marxists."  That has the effect of setting their cause back, which might not be such a bad thing.

KARL MARX IS DEAD.

Jacobin's Matt Karp writes a long obituary.  "Amid plague, protest, and violence, three larger trends emerged to mark the landscape of twenty-first-century politics far more distinctly than any candidate or ideology."  First, higher voter turnout in a presidential election.  A sample is not a trend.  Second, partisan polarization appears to be stronger.  But third, that polarization is not your great-grandfather's class struggle.

Yet the partisan politics of the Gilded Age, for all its storminess, was also the politics of class dealignment. Both Republicans and Democrats claimed the mantle of the American worker, accusing the other side of being owned by some privileged stratum of the elite — and they were both right. Although the two sides argued endlessly about economic issues, including tariffs and monetary policy, it was often difficult to identify any class-based fault lines underneath the ruckus.

That's one possible interpretation, although perhaps the shape of the new secular order was still taking place.  Were the United States still a yeoman's republic of freeholders, on their farms or in their businesses, or were the immigrants in the rising factory a proletariat that would either inherit the earth (the Marxian view) or, because of their origins, were they material to be molded by Wise Experts?  Regular readers can guess how much respect I have for the actions of Wise Experts, whether in their Gilded Age form or in their neurotic cat lady incarnations of the day.

Mr Karp, on the other hand, is not optimistic about the future of Marxist Vanguards.  "Class Dealignment Is a Disaster for Left Politics."

It's a long article.  Read it and develop your own conclusions.

THE YEARS OF DENYING COHERENT BELIEFS WILL CATCH UP WITH HIGHER EDUCATION.

Here's Richard Vedder with specifics.

Very dramatically many universities seemingly are abandoning reasoned debate over diverse perspectives of human behavior towards promoting ideological perspectives often denigrating and condemning the very development of a great American civilization emanating from the European Renaissance and Enlightenment. Borrowing from Samuel Huntington, we are having a collegiate clash of civilizations within America, most recently exemplified by the University of North Carolina’s brouhaha over a tenure appointment for Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist who prompted the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which is to the woke what the Bible is to Christians.

There's a longer post coming on how too much "sophisticated" opinion is regressing to the medieval, as in identifying and denouncing heretics rather than engaging the controversies. The incantations include "the science" and "our democracy."

There's nothing wrong with considering the possibility that a plantation feudalism matters in an important way in the American Founding, or that residual differences in outcomes despite all sorts of official and unofficial attempts to lift people up are system failures.  It's when those new faith traditions resist inquiry that higher education fails.

Academics frightened of being accused of being racist accede to any and all demands, some outrageous, articulated by protesters and the diversity bureaucrats often in very well paid university positions despite sometimes marginal academic credentials by traditional means of assessment. “White privilege” is a term loved by the woke. But another label, “rent-seeking,” may be equally appropriate. People are assuming power and much enhanced incomes and job security in return for appearing to be progressive, woke, and believing in critical race theory and all its dubious assertions.

Perhaps when donor money goes to relocate glacial errata, that will be a wokeness too far.

There were significant racial and gender injustices in American universities, say, 50 0r 60 years ago. Efforts to ameliorate them were needed, and codified in civil rights and other legislation. Using another historical analogy, as justifiable reforms prompted the French Revolution, they eventually led to excesses, a Reign of Terror, to great damage done to a great civilization. That may be happening, albeit on a smaller scale, on many college campuses today. Some polling data suggests it might be contributing to declining college enrollments as what Richard Nixon once called “the Silent Majority” loses confidence and support for our universities.

The rot has been spreading for over thirty years, and I disagree with Professor Vedder in holding higher education harmless for some of the recent unrest.

To be sure, it may be extreme to largely blame universities for much of the increase in rioting and protests. The George Floyd murder, for example, was an outrage not involving colleges. And religious constraints on lawless behavior are waning—around 1950, Gallup told us about three-quarters of Americans had a church affiliation—today, it is less than 50 percent. All that said, public scrutiny of college campus behavior likely will be on the rise, probably for good reason.

That's what fifty years of loose talk about "social construction" and "power systems" gets you.

COME UP WITH A VALUE PROPOSITION.

I ask again, because ask again I must, "Why can't the women's [basketball] teams figure out how to pitch their entertainment to a broader audience?"  In spring, I was dismayed by the grousing about disparities in the contents of the tournament swag bag.

No doubt, dear reader, when I tune in one of the women's bracket games, I'll see players wearing warmup jackets with EQUALITY embroidered on them. That, too, is rich, here we have participants in a CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT that teams have to QUALIFY FOR endorsing something that is completely at odds with what CHAMPIONSHIP or WINNING are about.

Maybe, just maybe, the people managing women's basketball, whether at the team, conference, association, or professional level, ought come up with a better value proposition than "look how unfair this all is." That pitch has probably won over all the professional feminists and alphabet people that are there to be won over. It's unlikely to entice any new eyeballs onto the screen or into the stands.

The poobahs of college athletics did look into the womens' complaints.

The NCAA was also criticized over different quality of gifts and food, and because the COVID-19 tests administered to men's participants were daily PCR tests, considered more accurate, compared to the less-accurate daily antigen testing available to teams in the women's tournament.

"It is beyond dispute that there were significant disparities between the 2021 Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships," said the report.

Creating something resembling equality of condition, or equality of outcome, or whatever it is the association would like to do, is not going to be easy.

The NCAA should "maximize value through gender equity in marketing, promotion, and sponsorships," the report said, by marketing the women's tournament as a "stand-alone property" and using the term "March Madness" in conjunction with both the men's and women's championships. Also, the NCAA should consider holding the men's and women's Final Four in the same location, the firm concluded.

How do you simultaneously promote the tournament as a "stand-alone" event and hold it in the same city where the men are playing? Do you condition the sale of tickets to the men's games on the purchase of tickets for the women's games?  What happens when ticket holders treat those games (on the current schedule, Sunday and Tuesday of the championship weekend) as the collegiate equivalent of the sophomore games in high school?  That's long been an area of contention among people selling sporting events: the women's audience is different from that of the men's, and, at least in my neighborhood, an earlier start helps bring in the young kids.  In addition, there are limits to serving up a dose of identity politics seasoned with feminism and at least the L, G, and B parts of the transgressive alphabet.  Those fans are already in the stands, it's attracting additional revenue that ought be the chore!

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WINNING THE BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP.

The 1971 tournament Most Valuable Player reflects on the return of the title to Milwaukee.  "The Milwaukee Bucks’ against-all-odds victory in the Finals is an inspirational moment that could be just what we needed to recharge ourselves and recommit to building the country up — even against all odds — as those reactionaries and MAGA-ites tear it down."

The early 1970s were also a time of conflict and raw emotions.

What did it feel like to play basketball during all this civil unrest? It felt like we were helping to keep the lid on, to give people something to cheer for rather than just protest against. This wasn’t to minimize the righteous need for those protests — I had participated in some myself — but to remind everyone that life was a balance of joy and sorrow and that it was our job to bring some of the joy.

Organized sports, still a microcosm of civilizational emergence, for good or for ill.

MICHAEL BARONE WENT THERE.

In a recent column, he noted the common origins of several of the Manhattan Project's scientists.

Today's human resources department professionals would be triggered if they looked at the list of physicists hired to produce what President Franklin Roosevelt was told could be a uranium-based bomb "with a destructiveness vastly greater than anything now known." They would be astounded that the president, in his haste to develop such a weapon, as he put it, "before Hitler got it," authorized the hiring of scientists without any attempt to match the diversity of the American population.

They would have noted that Leo Szilard, who drafted the letter signed by Albert Einstein that alerted Roosevelt to uranium's potential, was born a Hungarian Jew and was educated in the Realiskola, one of Budapest's elite high schools. And that among the lead physicists at the Manhattan Project were three other Hungarian Jews from Budapest educated at a single school, the Fasori Evangelikus Gimnazium, in the years during and just after World War I -- Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller.

Szilard even had the nerve to joke about their common origin. When asked why there was no evidence of intelligent extraterrestrials, he said, "They are already here among us -- they just call themselves Hungarians." These men were obviously a product of both nature and nurture, of hereditary mental capacity and a brilliantly stimulating education. Von Neumann, for example, could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head by age 6, while his parents had him tutored in French, English, German and Italian.

That's reasonably standard stuff, noodle around in political economy or applied mathematics or philosophy or even theology and you'll turn up a few Mitteleuropaische Jews.  There's a fairly anodyne explanation economic historians use, in that people who are forbidden to own land might become proficient at developing human capital that is portable.  Note, though, the turn Mr Barone takes.

The Manhattan Project's success owed much to Roosevelt's uncanny knack at choosing the right person for the jobs he considered important and to the clear need to hire the very best physicists available. And the prominence of the Martians, who grew within a few kilometers of each other, is one example of how the very best talent is unevenly distributed among humankind.

You can see something like that if you've been watching the Olympics over the years. As the writer Steve Sailer noted, runners of West African descent have dominated Olympic sprint events for years (a Chinese runner was the first sprinter with no such ancestry to qualify as a finalist since 1980) and runners of East African descent have dominated long-distance races for years as well. Something in the environment in which their ancestors evolved, plus rigorous training and personal discipline, accounts for their excellence.

That's also unsurprising, although his citation of Mr Sailer is. Ordinarily establishmentarian writers don't go there, as there are alt-right and pickup artist types who make blunter use of Mr Sailer's platforms including VDare and Unz Review.

Mr Barone doesn't stop there, either.

Nor is it likely that American Blacks will soon be represented proportionately to population in the right-hand tail of the IQ bell curve, given the gap between Black and non-Black people's IQ scores that has persisted despite half a century of attempts at remediation, as documented in Charles Murray's recent book, "Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America."

As Murray argued, the correct response is to judge people as individuals, not members of a race or other collective. And to appreciate that every group of people in the right-hand tail of any bell curve looks like part of America. Just like the Hungarian-born "Martians" in the Manhattan Project.

That's another reference that might set Establishment Opinion off.  Two deeper questions suggest themselves, though.  First, if some areas of intellectual or semi-intellectual inquiry are Off Limits, is that attitude likely to drive more people to world-views that they might not otherwise hold?  Second, what is the most effective way for a community dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal to encourage the emergence of applied mathematicians or philosophers of West African descent or of sprinters or distance runners of Hungarian extraction, that is where kids take an interest in those things?

NO LIMIT TO COLLEGIATE IDIOCIES.

Confound it, I'd still really rather post about shark attacks or railway preservation or the like.  Sometimes, though, the terminally stupid people who run higher education leave me with no alternative but to call attention.  You'd think, dear reader, that the recent brush with having funding and tenure protections nullified by the state legislature might have concentrated some minds in Madison.

Sorry, no.  "If ever there was a poster child for the absurdity of cancel culture, this is it."

What is it?  "Every time I think we’ve reached peak woke insanity, the idiocy, stupidity, and sheer, shocking lunacy of the left manifests itself in some other quiet corner of rationalism and reason while the rest of us are left gasping for air."

This time, it's using $50K in donated funds to move a rock deposited by a retreating glacier because of a colloquial reference to black rocks a century ago.

Chamberlin Rock, on the top of Observatory Hill, is named after Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, a geologist and former university president. Students of color on campus say the rock represents a history of discrimination. The boulder was referred to as a derogatory name for Black people in a Wisconsin State Journal story in 1925. The derogatory term was commonly used in the 1920s to describe any large dark rock. University historians have not found any other time that the term was used, but they said the Ku Klux Klan was active on campus at that time, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

But ... intersectionality be praised ... long before Black Hawk and the Sauk Nation retreated through the area, pursued by Abraham Lincoln, other tribes buried their dead near the rock.  Thus the rock had to be moved in such a way as to not disturb the burial mounds.  (I know of a few other Indian mounds near the lake, some of them in secluded locations conducive to, er, getting acquainted.  Are those now being patrolled to prevent such problematic behavior?)

It's time for the adults to take charge, isn't it?  "This was a prime opportunity for a teachable moment, in which the grown-ups running the campus tell the young people that the answer is 'No!' But apparently at UW-Madison, the children are in charge." And they're more enabled than ever. "Don’t you wish they’d just wet their pants like other two-year-olds to get us to notice them?"

Well, no, the people currently running the universities are intellectual heirs to the spineless administrators of the mid-to-late 1960s, who praised their noisy protestors as the most involved and enlightened students ever.  Here's how the university flacks spin the action.

The University of Wisconsin–Madison moved the former Chamberlin Rock, an object that had become a painful symbol of racism to generations of students, to a site off the main campus on August 6.

The rock had sat at the crest of Observatory Hill since 1925. That same year, it was referred to in a newspaper headline by a deeply offensive nickname that included a racial slur. The derogatory nickname was commonly used at the time to refer to any large, dark rock.

The Wisconsin Black Student Union, in partnership with the Native American student organization Wunk Sheek, led an effort to remove the rock from campus. UW–Madison’s main campus is on ancestral Ho-Chunk land.

Some conscience-cowboy comes across the reference sometime in the last year, and that somehow becomes a "symbol of racism to generations????" Good grief. Why not convert one of the student unions or a residence hall into a Ho-Chunk casino, and reduce congestion at the Dells?

The rock itself is what geologists call a "glacial erratic," meaning it was picked up and pushed along by a glacier, and then tumbled out as a previous round of global warming melted the polar ice cap.  Does it now rate a special description, socially constructed glacial erratic? “Students and the general public will no longer casually encounter the rock, but it will remain available to those specifically seeking it out for teaching and learning purposes.”

So much for me writing any more checks to any operating units of the University of Wisconsin.

NO. NEXT QUESTION?

If a Vaccine Resistant Covid Strain Develops, Will Dr. Fauci Pay Any Price?  The gnome from Brooklyn takes a lot of stick from Militant Normals.  I note the question above, as it's from Dean Baker, who is more like an old-school Keynesian with socialist tendencies.  "The idea that millions of people will needlessly die because our political leaders did not want to jeopardize the profits of the pharmaceutical industry is too horrible to be aired in places like the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio."  He apologizes for engaging in "clickbait."  The nuance follows.

I’m not out to get Dr. Fauci, who deserves some sort of Nobel Prize for trying to give straight information to the public, even as Donald Trump was doing everything he could to minimize the pandemic. But there is an important issue of both, our current failings in vaccinating the world, and a system that almost always allows those at the top to escape responsibility for their failures.

To him, though, it's Big Pharma being able to make money off Operation Warp Speed that is the disgrace, rather than the destruction wrought by the continuing stifling of ordinary life with no payoff in slowing the contagion.

In the meantime, we will be seeing a whole new round of infections and deaths, as well as trillions of dollars of lost economic output. And, just to be clear, these trillions in lost output is not just an issue of stacks of dollar bills in a vault, this translates into people going without food, medical care, shelter and other basic needs. Rich countries have the resources to largely protect their populations from most of the economic impact of the pandemic; developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America do not.

The so-called public health experts could back off and let us take precautions as we see fit, and that would make possible the production of that food, medical care, and shelter. But I digress.  I'll let Mr Baker have the final word, as he is recommending that some of Our Intellectual Betters be turfed out.  "Top public health officials, and indeed the whole public health profession, are largely immune from this sort of accountability for infinitely bigger mess-ups."

MARKING OFF.

The Karlson Brothers Circus completed a productive week at the Head of the Lakes.

Summer is not yet over, and the corona tyrants have not yet instituted another round of house arrests.

See you down the road.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL KIDS.

The dog days of summer are not yet over, and the lemonade stand opportunities should still be there.

Not, apparently, in Everett, Washington.

There are very few people who haven’t driven by a lemonade stand in this country and thought about how cute it was to see enterprising young folks earning some pocket change by serving up some delicious cold, sweet lemon-flavored beverages to their neighbors on a hot summer day. There is simply nothing wrong with kids being allowed to do this provided they have adult supervision (and plenty of supplies on hand!).

What’s especially infuriating in many of these situations is that there are usually more pressing issues the city should be dealing with instead of targeting children for doing something so harmless.

All of this brings me to the latest instance of a child being punished for committing the sin of opening up a lemonade stand. According to local residents in one Everett, Washington community, a neighbor reported a stand being run at a nearby park by a 7-year-old girl to the city’s parks and recreation department. Not long after that, a park ranger showed up and politely informed the girl’s grandmother that the stand had to go.

I'm going to cut Everett a little slack, in that setting up a lemonade stand in a city park might cause friction with the lessee of a concession stand on park property, or otherwise be a traffic hazard.  It's the more conventional table near the driveway of one's house that appeals.  But until recently, that was forbidden (unsurprisingly) in Illinois and (somewhat surprisingly) in New Hampshire.  Here are the circumstances leading to a modicum of commercial freedom for 'tweens in Illinois.

In 2017, then 9-year-old Hayli Martenez opened a lemonade stand in her front yard in a low-income neighborhood of Kankakee, Illinois. She charged 50 cents per cup. All of the profit went to her college fund.

"As we kept doing it, I got to see everybody smile when they tasted my lemonade," Hayli told Illinois Policy. "It was just … wow. They were lining up to get my lemonade."

But in July of 2019, Hayli received notice from state and city health officials that she would have to shut down the stand or be fined. She ended up switching the stand to donation-only, but the incident received state-wide attention.

Now, roughly two years later, the state has passed "Hayli's Law" to protect her business and those of other entrepreneurial kids around the state.

"Who would have thought you would need a lemonade law?" said Hayli's mom Iva. "But it wasn't about the lemonade. It was about being able to take what you have and make it work for you. We turned lemons into lemonade."

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law," the Illinois law reads, "the Department of Public Health, the health department of a unit of local government, or a public health district may not regulate the sale of lemonade or nonalcoholic drinks or mixed beverages by a person under the age of 16."

Well, yeah, but is that a loophole to get around child labor laws, or pure food regulations? I'm being sarcastic, but I know the ways of Our Progressive Betters.

The necessity of these "Lemonade Laws" is a byproduct of hastily passed licensure requirements and regulations that don't take into account the full consequences of their enforcement. Oftentimes, irregular enforcement of these requirements can be used to shut down businesses arbitrarily deemed to be "undesirable."

Hopefully, these small steps for lemonade stands will draw attention to the overly broad licensing requirements that defy both common sense and the entrepreneurial spirit of America.

Occupational licensing, or the Centers for Disease Control: neither recently covering themselves with glory, are they?

SCHADENFREUDELICIOUS!

I really, really, shouldn't pay any attention to the Olympics, or to Victory Girl Toni Williams scorning the women's footie squad.  "Women’s Soccer Team Loses; Patriots Cheer."  That's what happens when sports competitors inject themselves into the culture wars in such a way as to antagonize potential fans.  "So, you lost to Sweden and to Canada. Boo freaking hoo. I am cheering. Not that I care, but remember that time the boys FC Dallas under 15 boys beat the women’s soccer team. Yes, that was you too."

That might not be the fairest story to tell, soccer being a sport popular with American eight year old girls, and adolescent and older males throughout the third world, some of whose families might have sought a better life in Dallas.  But yeah, deplorable-shaming potential fans is stupid.  That might include Power Line's Paul Mirengoff.

I’ll never root against the U.S. or take pleasure from Americans losing. However, I’ll shed no tears over the U.S. women falling short at the Olympics.

This is one of the most obnoxious, arrogant, and whiny sports teams I’ve observed in more than sixty years of fandom. And, although there’s likely some diversity in the political views of team members, the face of the squad, Megan Rapinoe, is an abrasive far-leftist — and a world class narcissist.

The Olympics may be the end of the line, or close to it, for Rapinoe and other team veterans. Their accomplishments are impressive, even taking into account the relatively small number of nations that take women’s soccer seriously enough to provide worthy competition.

I’m hoping that the next generation of U.S. women’s team members will be less entitled and a bit more humble than the generation that soon will be moving on.

There might be people who see in that "obnoxious" or "entitled" behavior a manifestation of authenticity. Sister Toldjah is having none of it.  Ultimately, it's about the value proposition.  "In other words, generate the necessary revenue that would justify getting paid on par with the guys and then we can revisit the 'equal pay' issue again to see if Rapinoe, who make hundreds of thousands if not millions in endorsement deals alone, has any further questions."  Find the way to bring in new fans without seeming to sell out the true believers, and see what happens.

WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMER'S YACHTS?

That's the ironically intended title of a book from the American High expressing some, shall we say, skepticism about Wall Street's efforts to promote a peoples' capitalism: "Because if advice worked, there would be more yachts belong to the customers."

On the other hand, consider what's happened at the Head of the Lakes.  The harbor facilities of Duluth and Superior were once quintessentially Rust Belt: coal, and before the pipelines, petroleum products in, iron ore (lots of iron ore) and grain out.  Only the Port of New York and New Jersey used to move more tonnage in a year, and more than a little of that might have been food or manufactured products for export that made use of that ore or grain.

A recent visit, though, got me thinking about the sort of privilege hoarding and upward concentration of wealth I keep hearing about.  It would make sense of a sort for the people of Duluth and Superior to preserve a lake freighter or two for the benefit of tourists.

William A. Irvin was the flagship of the United States Steel fleet until the late 1960s.  It never paid to rebuild this boat as a self-unloader.

Look across the slip, though, where one of the warehouse complexes once stood, and behold a yacht basin.

Something about this isn't adding up: with all that upward concentration of wealth, what's the value proposition in converting a Great Lakes harbor that ices over earlier and unfreezes later than almost anywhere this side of Port Baikal into a series of yacht basins?

That's another look over Irwin's rail, showing lake-faring sailboats, with some of the converted industrial buildings behind.  All over the Duluth harbor are former warehouses converted to lofts or hotels, and on the Superior side, where the bigger grain terminals once were, there's a massive yacht basin as well.  Should be impossible given all that upward hoarding of wealth, shouldn't it?

Actually, no.  The information technology capitalists might have been able to capture a lot of value a nickel at a time.  The people paying the prices for the use of Amazon or Apple or Microsoft or Google products or services might have placed a subjective valuation of more than what they paid for those items on those items.  Enough so, in some cases, to be able to spring for a yacht?

Three sailboats at play.  There might be a few powerboats out there as well.  It doesn't take as many iron boats to move the taconite any more, as the iron boats are bigger, and steel recycling has advanced so as to be able to produce a broader range of products.  It's not just for garbage cans and reinforcing bar any more.

But the iron boats go, as the mariners all know, with the Gales of November to come.

Mesabi Miner, perhaps my favorite iron boat name.  I'm not sure who the successor operator of Interlake Steel currently is.  It's still quite the show for the tourists thronging the Canal Park area of Duluth.  (Outdoor eateries!  Carriage rides!  Microbreweries!  Short walk to the Duluth Trading store!)

Who knows, might even be a few owners of the customers' yachts among those spectators.

Laker traffic isn't what it used to be: after Mesabi Miner's arrival at eight p.m., a saltie was due around eleven.

A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT TO THE MILWAUKEE BUCKS?

Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg spent some of his childhood in Wisconsin.

In 2013, the Bucks finally found the man who would replace [Kareem] Abdul-Jabbar, a Greek citizen of Nigerian descent named Giannis Antetokounmpo. He was 18 years old and while his talent was recognized, he was not invited to hang out in the green room with the other top prospects of that year. When his name was called, he came up on stage from the stands at Barclays Center, a face in the crowd. Over the following eight seasons, he transformed himself from a skinny refugee kid into the most imposing and relentless basketball player on the planet, earning the nickname “The Greek Freak.” On Tuesday evening, Antetokounmpo led the Bucks to their first championship in 50 years, scoring 50 points in a 105-98 clincher against the Phoenix Suns. For his part, Antetokounmpo is a thoroughly likable young man with a big smile and a spectacular game, and his teammates are equally talented and amiable. And after a 50-year wait, my childhood team had finally returned to the summit.

It's not, though, that you get nice things when you're from Milwaukee. "But still, but still, I want to believe the Bucks have accomplished something noble and that my years of fandom are now being rewarded. My head says it’s a lie, but my heart says something else."

That's fine.  Enjoy it, and the harmonic convergence of a Brewer team playing well and a Packer team that might make one more run at the Lombardi Trophy.

THE SOUNDS OF FREEDOM.

It probably defeats the purpose of having a stealthy drone to make it sound like a B-17 or a formation of Mustangs.  All of those are available at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual gathering in Oshkosh, which does, as well, feature experimental aircraft, including the planes people built themselves, and then flew to the show.  National Review's L. R. Abel went there, and liked what he saw.

From the Kitty Hawk trials to the X-15 supersonic experiments, we’ve been strapping ourselves to increasingly volatile and ingenious air-based machines for over a century. Nowhere can you observe this altitudinous affection more than at this week’s Experimental Aircraft Association’s (EAA) AirVenture event in Oshkosh, Wis., which routinely brings over 600,000 visitors to the shores of Lake Winnebago. Walking the grounds here, I was struck by just how proud we are of our heritage in flight, the uniqueness of the American piloting community, and the freedom we enjoy of going wheels-up.

Does anyone else see echoes of the X-15 program in those private space flight projects taking place today?  And yes, the serious builders go to the workshops, and the budget-minded among them prowl the extensive swap meet area.  The guts of the show, though, are ... those Warbirds.

The first stop one should make at the EAA is Warbird Alley. Here in tidy rows are warplanes from World War I to the present day. Japanese, British, American, and Russki aircraft sit alongside one another as P-51 Mustangs swoop overhead. The opportunity to fly in a B-17 bomber or C-47 paratrooper transport is available to the general public for a nominal fee. Sit in the bleachers, and servicemen from multiple eras will regale you with tales of action they saw while standing in front of the types of planes they fought in. As one wanders the grounds, one of the many volunteers will occasionally hold you back as a Spitfire taxis past 20 feet away. The care and dedication provided these craft are a testament to those who maintain them, revealing a pride in what the craft represent and their impact on the world.

He argues that if aircraft didn't exist, Americans would have to invent them. Oh, wait ...

Americans have a unique relationship with aviation for reasons practical and dispositional. Ours is a vast nation with a topography ill-suited for ground transport, while aircraft allow us to skip over the Rockies, Appalachians, and grizzly-infused Alaskan wilderness with minimal effort. The Midwest does not need the plane for its ability to circumvent treacherous terrain, but to apply pesticides and weedkiller on the swaths of farmland, providing the nation’s food with chemical protection efficiently.

We attach national pride to airborne events as well. Every schoolchild knows the accomplishments of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. We celebrate the American World War II fighter pilots rebuffing the Zeros in the East and the Messerschmitts in the West while our B-17s bombed the enemy into submission, and rightfully so. Most of all is when we looked to the stars and landed on the moon, besting the USSR and making the case for freedom over tyranny. This culture of exploration and air superiority continues today in the launch of spacecraft from our shores, most recently by private-sector pioneers. The world comes to us when it wants to push the limits of human progress, and that is no accident.

Not sure about that "every schoolchild" or whether Mr Lindbergh is the next to be de-pedestaled for his 1930s attitudes. But this is supposed to be today's good cheer post. And the crop-dusters were at work in the neighborhood a few days ago.

If you go, you probably won't run across many robe-and-sandals metrofexuals. (Or if you know somebody like that who could benefit from some education, show him through the swap meet area.)

Europeans and American progressives will occasionally mutter into their facial hair about our lack of “public transport” like trains and buses, not realizing just how vast this country is. Chicago to D.C. is two hours by air, eight times longer by rail. New York to Los Angeles is several hours by plane, a journey that would otherwise take a week. These longer air routes are often less expensive than public ground transport is or could be, particularly if one were to go the bus-and-hotel route. It commends the American spirit that we are constantly improving upon long-range solutions rather than remaining complacent with anachronistic technologies.

But if you go (next year, this year's event is done) please understand that "no beer until after five" means "after five p.m., Central time."

DONALD TRUMP WENT THERE.

I'm not sure how an election-audit rally in Arizona becomes a sally in the culture wars, but there it is.  "Trump says if he was coaching women’s sports, he would only recruit trans athletes, then speculates on Lebron James transitioning and playing women’s basketball."

That might be why it's wise for political figures to act presidential.  The fact-checkers had to get on the case, e.g. "James identifies as male and has never publicly expressed a desire to undergo gender confirmation surgery."  Yes, he's quite capable of winning titles in his own skin, and I suspect it likely that mediocre male basketball players are going to cross simply to have a better shot at a letter or a title.  Not that I haven't had been there myself, if on a smaller platform.  "I have, however, long entertained a wicked thought that someday, somewhere, there is a basketball coach who will end the dominance of Connecticut, or perhaps Stanford or Notre Dame, by recruiting a few male-to-female crossers who can really crash the boards."

I fear, as well, that the former president is losing his chops as an entertainment promoter.  Yes, a coach going after the crossers would shake up the women's basketball world, but would anybody care? "Supporting women’s basketball is a political act against sexism, racism and homophobia. Anyone who believes otherwise is not paying attention."

That has the effect of diminishing the fan base.  There is real play value in the game, but the players and the promoters have to offer a value proposition to people who might want to, oh, have a good time, rather than be exposed to more woke scolding.  Woke scolding, though, is second nature.  Consider how Mrs Megan Rapinoe twists herself into pretzels to explain the U.S. team being in the gym for the anthems.

Sue Bird sees no contradiction with the U.S. team staying on the court during the national anthem at the Olympics.

It’s a change for the four-time Olympic gold medalist and her WNBA teammates. During the WNBA season players usually leave the court to raise awareness for social justice before the anthem is played at games.

“You are wearing USA jerseys and it does change the conversation a little bit and what you’re representing,” Bird told The Associated Press after practice on Saturday. “With that, I don’t feel like a hypocrite in any way. Everyone knows where we stand. I don’t think it contradicts anything since we’re actually doing the work.”

Logistically it would also be difficult for the U.S. to not be on the court for the playing of the anthem. Unlike WNBA games when it’s played about 10 minutes before tipoff, at the Olympics it’s done right before the start of games.

I know just enough about the presence of the absence to be dangerous, which doesn't prevent me from being skeptical that one raises awareness by not being around.  Not antagonizing spectators, perhaps I can see.  Not that it's persuading Phil Mushnick.

At least for now they have declared, through captain Sue Bird, that they will cut us all a break to appear as if they’re minimally willing to gather on the court to represent the United States on a world stage during the anthem (even if standing while looking down, away from the American flag), in defiance of their conviction that America is unworthy of them.

For that, we should be grateful. After all, most of us have never walked in their slave-wage-made, swoosh-conspicuous Nikes and clothing ensembles, products of Red China, which incarcerates those who advocate democracy, including free speech and the right to protest, at the risk of disappearing.

It’s tough for me to identify with their woke activism, given that I didn’t have the opportunity to play ball in exchange for a free college education. Heck, for 10 years I had to pay off my college loan in monthly mailings to make good on my educational debt. Money once earned, well spent.

I doubt that team members endorsing retroactive forgiveness of student loans will change his mind.

WHAT IS FOOD FREEDOM?

Confound it, I'd really rather post about shark attacks.  These days, though, the political economy of home gardening has become a referendum issue in Maine.

Maine voters are set to decide this fall whether to enshrine a "right to food" in the state's constitution, the Portland Press-Herald reported this week. If passed, the state would become the first to guarantee such a right.

The proposed constitutional amendment, sponsored by Sen. Craig Hickman (D–Winthrop), an organic farmer, will ask voters if they "favor amending the Constitution of Maine to declare that all individuals have a natural, inherent[,] and unalienable right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health[,] and well-being[.]"

There's more at stake than the possibility of urban chicken coops. That "unalienable" might mean becoming a subcontractor for a strain of Aroostook County seed potatoes would be against the law.

After all, Sen. Hickman, the amendment's sponsor, is an organic farmer who—by definition—does not utilize GMO seeds on his farm. In that context, it's difficult to see how the seed language is anything but an attempt to target GMO seed makers and to evict their crops from Maine entirely.

That's on top of the contested meaning of "right to consume."  Is that another entitlement?  Provided by whom?  Or is that a "keep your legalities away from my chicken coop?'

LIVING AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS.

If "American greatness" is silly ideas about who should pay for the water mains, count me out.

To understand how government-funded infrastructure can actually result in less regulation and a lower cost of living, consider the case of water services. Government policymakers have two directions they can take. They can fund the construction of water supply and distribution infrastructure, or they can allow the private sector to take control of water supply and distribution. The typical reaction from conservatives and libertarians is predictable: Let the private sector do it. But it’s worth exploring the consequences of actually doing that.

If water is a commodity, there really ought be no difference.  See if you can spot the errors, dear reader.

The reality of water supply in any arid part of the United States—and that would include the entire southwest from Texas to California—is that amortization of construction costs constitutes 70 to 80 percent of the cost of delivered water, whether to farmers or households. Whether the construction price tag is for new storage reservoirs or desalination plants, or even upgraded wastewater treatment plants to enable water reuse, this financial reality applies.

When evaluating the cost of infrastructure proposals, the question of socializing the construction cost or privatizing it has tremendous relevance to the end users. If government funds pay for 50 percent of the construction costs of water projects, or more, that translates directly into permanently lower costs to the future consumers of that water. What happens if 100 percent of these costs are privatized instead?

Apparently it's taxpayers elsewhere who are paying for this construction costs, or else perhaps the water utilities are going to neglect the upkeep.

The result of privatizing the cost of water infrastructure investment is that there will be less investment and less construction. Investors will not touch a water project if they can’t sell the water at a profit, and if consumers can’t afford the water, there will be no sales. Therefore two consequences apply.

First, the state will ration water. The state will accomplish this with smart meters that monitor every drop of household or agricultural water consumption. The state will mandate the sale of internet enabled water conserving appliances that in every qualitative sense are burdens on the users. Low flow shower heads that make it impossible to rinse shampoo out of long hair. Faucets that automatically turn off every 10 seconds. Washing machines that damage clothes, take an inordinately long time to complete a cycle, and don’t do a very good job of cleaning. Government micromanagement of water consumption is an inevitable consequence of privatizing water infrastructure.

The other consequence of privatizing water infrastructure, perhaps even more ironic, is that there will be an equal if not greater cost to the taxpayer. Because water rationing and higher water rates will accompany an unsubsidized, downscaled water system, the government would step in and offer financial assistance to low-income households to pay their water bills and to purchase water-conserving appliances. With tens of millions of households ultimately receiving what will be permanent subsidies to their water consumption, the tax impact of privatization vs. government-funded water infrastructure is likely to be a wash.

Water is a scarce resource, whether it is being piped from mountain reservoirs into desert regions, or being drawn from Lake Superior (No salt. Free of sharks.) One can ration it by price, or one can ration it by politics.  The sewer socialists of years ago understood this.  If one rations the water by price, people can decide for themselves whether to install low-flow shower heads or to flood irrigate their lawns.  But the price of a unit of water ought be invariant as to ownership of the water works, as long as there's price discovery at work.  The author gets some of this point, then he gets into dangerous waters.

This is a crucial point for libertarians and conservatives to ponder before they reflexively condemn government funding of legitimate public infrastructure. Critical questions that have to be asked go beyond the basic question of whether the private sector will do a more efficient job. That’s almost a meaningless question anyway, since the same civil engineering firms will be contracted to perform most of these projects anyway; just in one case the payers include the government and in the other case the payers will only be private investors.

Instead, the crucial questions to ask include the following: Will privatizing these infrastructure projects lead to higher prices that will result in the government stepping in to ration and subsidize consumption? And if so, can our focus instead be on advocating for government spending on infrastructure that will create abundant and affordable supplies of water—or energy or transportation assets—so everyone can afford to pay for these essential services without subsidies, and so there will not be a necessity for the government to step in and micromanage our access to them?

There is no such thing as government spending that creates abundance.  In practice, the federal government with great fanfare appropriates money for infrastructure spending, then local politicians show up with great fanfare to start the subsidized construction.  Generally, nobody is impolite enough to ask whether the local municipality can cover the maintenance, whether it is of that bridge or that drainage ditch or those water mains.  Hard cheese, for instance, if Ferndale, Michigan would like a walkable shopping district near Woodward Avenue:

Ferndale does not have the resources to cover those expenses on its own. [Mayor Melanie] Piana applied for a $3.9 million federal Transportation Alternatives Program grant and is waiting to see if her city will be awarded the funds. Even if they get it, she will have to contribute $1.2 million in local funds, about the amount the city spends on street maintenance for the whole municipality every year.

That's not simply a Ferndale problem: "What cities are actually struggling with isn’t money for expansion but money for maintaining what they already have."  And that's the way the infrastructure crumbles.

By accepting this infrastructure investment, you are promising that you will keep it in good operating condition and fix or even replace it as needed. That is the covenant you have with your people, the residents of your community.

In accomplishing this, you can’t print your own money. You can’t deficit spend without consequence. There is no theory of economics that imagines local governments being able to operate like the sovereign federal government. Local governments are much more like a family or a business in their need to balance their budget, live within their means, and make tough choices about allocating resources.

To keep the commitment to your neighbors on this new infrastructure, your city will rely on taxing the wealth of those in your community. That might involve property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, user fees, or other revenue streams you can generate locally. This is where local wealth creation comes into the equation.

No wealth creation, no money for maintenance. No return on investment, no money for replacement. Insufficient financial productivity on these infrastructure investments will make them a financial millstone around the community’s neck, the terrible obligation made by a prior generation that is robbing you of resources today while you raise taxes, cut services, and are slowly ground into a cycle of decline.

Thus, it makes more sense to treat the roads and waterworks as productive assets, and to price them accordingly. But unbundling production policies from incomes policies is hard, which is why you get the muddle that Edward Ring concludes with. "When infrastructure investment is turned over to the private sector, the ultimate result can be more taxes and more regulations. They just come in the form of disbursed entitlements and subsidies to pay all the low-income households that cannot, without government assistance, afford to purchase rationed, scarce water and energy, or pay to use the toll roads."